Damage
by the stargate time traveller
Summary: AU of The Timeless Children. The Master takes a last shot against the Doctor, and now Team TARDIS are left with the pieces as their friend recovers.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer - I don't own Doctor Who.

As I was watching The Timeless Children, I thought to myself what could happen if things went very very different. Anyway, please enjoy. Please let me know what you think of this story.

Thanks.

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Damage.

Looking Ko Sharmus in the face, the Doctor was unsure of whether to feel angry or relieved that this human was taking over the responsibility of ending the threat of the Cyber-Masters. A part of her was more angry with herself because once more she had hesitated in taking direct action in the face of destructive threat; the Daleks and Davros had been bad enough, especially since her fifth self had told Turlough and Tegan and Stien and Mercer in the TARDIS about making one of the biggest mistakes in her lives, failing to end the Daleks, but what the Master had done to the Time Lords, setting everything up so they would be able to regenerate inside cybernetic bodies….

Like she had told the Dalek Prime Minister two regenerations back, the Doctor had long since thought the Master had run out of ways to make her want to feel sick; the Toclafane were bad enough, but what he had done to the Time Lords…She was disgusted that she had even tried to rehabilitate one of the Master's previous regenerations, and on top of the devastating revelations she'd endured now about the Timeless Child, the last thing she had needed was to hesitate.

But at the same time she was relieved, she no longer had the responsibility; the Master might goad her all he liked, but she had never liked taking action like this, never like this.

This was why she never liked war; because it made so easy to become a monster.

"The universe still needs you," Ko Sharmus said softly, looking kindly at her without looking at her with contempt for what she had failed to do before he arrived. "So I suggest you run."

"But-," the Doctor immediately began protecting, hating the fact this wise old human was prepared to sacrifice his life because she hadn't had the guts to do the dirty work herself. She was prepared to say they could come up with a better plan, but he interrupted her loudly before she could even finish her protest.

"Run, Doctor!"

The Doctor jumped at the sound of the shot, but inwardly she smiled because it meant she didn't need to shoulder the responsibility even though she knew if she had shown some strength, she could give this group of Time Lords the Master had experimented and mutilated some peace that regeneration could not provide.

The Doctor glanced down at the bomb with the shrunken remains of the Lone Cyberman stuck to it, cursing herself for giving this man such a terrible burden, but one look into his eyes told her Ko Sharmus was only too happy to make amends because of his own failures. A part of her wished to know more about the circumstances behind the war, behind the Lone Cyberman and his hunt for the Cyberium in the first place, but she knew she would never have the chance even though she would understand it better than she did the revelation of the Timeless Child.

"Don't you dare!" she heard the Master hiss behind her, but the Doctor refused to listen to her old friend. She had come to see that the Master was irredeemable, and she cursed her previous self for even letting Missy get close only to be stabbed in the back, and that was before discovering what the Master had done to Gallifrey, to the Time Lords, and converting some of the bodies into Cybermen (the Doctor didn't know for sure if these were the only Cyber-Masters on Gallifrey, but she wasn't willing to chance it).

The Doctor gasped and she broke into a run out of the Matrix room.

"DOCTOR!" She heard the Master yell behind her, but the yell made her keep running out of the room (she thought she heard Ko Sharmus say something, but she was running out too fast to get a proper idea of what he was saying), and she ran towards the TARDIS bay where she'd sent the TARDIS containing the last human survivors and Yaz, Graham, and Ryan to Earth.

As she turned the corner and found the door leading to the bay, the Doctor dug a hand into the pocket of her coat where her sonic screwdriver was kept and she pulled it out and opened the door with a quick burst of energy from her screwdriver. The door opened and she rushed into the bay where there was a small number of TARDISes that had survived the end of Gallifrey (when she and her friends had arrived in the bay earlier, she had momentarily wondered if some of the more inventive and imaginative Time Lords, realising what the Master was doing, had tried to escape with their own TARDISes, but she had no way of knowing unless she went out looking for them), and she headed for the nearest with a plan already in mind; she would use this TARDIS to return to the Refugee Planet, and recover her own TARDIS, and go to Earth to reunite with her Fam…

She was halfway across the floor of the landing bay when-

The Doctor screamed in sudden pain as she felt a searing pain burning through her chest, her ears buzzing as she heard the blast of a laser weapon, and her strength - already strained due to the stress and exposure to the Matrix - dwindled, and she dropped to the floor, gasping for air as the blast ripped through her body before the buzzing stopped, leaving her panting in agony.

She heard the now-familiar sound of laughter and she weakly turned her head, and she wasn't surprised to see the Master standing there, gloating cruelly at her. She momentarily wondered how he had gotten here before her, but then the Master lifted his hand and showed off the teleport bracelet wrapped around his wrist.

She coughed weakly, gazing at him in shock at what he had just done to her although she wasn't surprised; all of the Masters she'd encountered over the centuries differed in how they handled their defeats, but from what she had seen of this one, he was an even sorer loser than others.

"We'll meet again, Doctor," he smirked at her, finding her pain to be the funniest joke even if no-one else would appreciate the humour. "So long for now!"

The Master rushed into another TARDIS and a few moments later the time machine dematerialised. The Doctor sighed weakly as she felt her body beginning to shut down after some of it had been burnt out, knowing she would encounter her former friend again at some point in the future.

Friend?

No. The Master had long since stopped being her friend, but her true friends were on Earth. Her Fam. Thinking about them gave the Doctor the strength she needed to get up off of the floor, well that and the knowledge Ko Sharmus would be detonating the bomb by now-

She heard the sound of a distant rumble, and she realised the bomb had already exploded. She had to get out of here before the shockwave reached her, and she gasped with pain as she pulled herself up and, using her remaining to get inside the TARDIS.

Somehow the Doctor was able to reach the console and quickly closing the doors, she started setting the controls. The TARDIS had just dematerialised when the shockwave hit the outer shell of the TARDIS, but in its dematerialising state with the time-ship halfway into the Time Vortex, the shockwave barely affected the TARDIS.

The Doctor smiled gratefully while she heard the sound of dematerialisation and the cycling sounds of the dimensional stabilisers working with the engines, and she leaned on the console, wincing in pain.

Her smile fell as she took note of a slow but sudden burning sensation tearing its way throughout her body. She closed her eyes in horror, knowing only too well what the sensation was.

Whatever the Master had done, the damage had simply been too great.

She was regenerating.

The Doctor opened her eyes and looked down at the console, feeling her head spinning while she was aware of the slight glow coming from her hands. The stress of being inside such a secreted part of the Matrix for a prolonged period and the damage the Master had just done to her meant she lacked the physical strength to do what her previous self had done, trying to stop the regeneration even if she had known at the time it had been futile.

In her current state, the Doctor was just too tired, too weak. She doubted she could even muster the strength to do more than to lean on the console for dear life never mind shout defiantly she was never going to regenerate again.

No. She wasn't going to die, not like this.

The Doctor took a deep breath, mustering as much of her energy as she could and she got to work on the console. First, she checked the sensors for the TARDIS trails and with a bit of work, she found the trail which led to Earth. That done she set the controls to follow the trail, but she also set the controls of the TARDIS to the Refugee Planet, homing in on the TARDIS signal on that planet. As she worked the Doctor found it increasingly hard to concentrate. She was holding the regeneration back with incredible will power, but it was sending waves of dizziness through her and the Doctor was having problems focusing on the task at hand.

She closed her eyes after a particularly bad case of dizziness made her almost collapse to the ground, but she caught herself just in time.

"Think of the Fam," she whispered to herself, thinking of the times she'd shared with them; that time on Desolation, their first journeys in the TARDIS, meeting Rosa Parks, visiting Pakistan, and all the others. The images of them all having a grand time gave her strength, and she managed to push the dizziness aside and she looked at the console with a renewed focus.

Her fingers danced around the controls, and the sound of materialisation filled the air and she turned around and saw the familiar blue police box shape of the Type 40 TARDIS she had stolen so many lifetimes ago from Gallifrey appearing in the console room, becoming more solid and more defined as the TARDIS she had taken from Gallifrey just now landed.

The sight of the one constant in her lives appearing made the Doctor smile while she fought the regeneration off for as long as she could just as the TARDIS dematerialised as it obeyed the commands she'd inputted to follow the time-trail of the TARDIS she'd sent the others in towards Earth.

Earth…

That reminded her.

The Doctor turned back to the console, and she looked down at the controls thoughtfully. Her renewed focus was fading fast, but she quickly remembered the two human survivors - what were their names again? - and she knew they would need time to adapt to the 21st century, and she knew her friends could handle it.

As much as it pained her, the Doctor knew it would be better if she gave them time to help the two survivors of the Cyber Wars. With that in mind, she began setting the controls, using her focus on Graham to give her the strength to keep going while the rest of her was exhausted. As she worked, the Doctor saw her hands. They were glowing with regeneration energy.

It was close…Oh, so close.

She pulled away from the console, pleased with herself even if she was upset that her friends would be worried about her for a while. She had just set the controls to materialise in Grahams' house two months after the other TARDIS had landed on Earth. It took her a few moments to program the details for Graham's house into the TARDIS, and she needed to double her efforts to focus, but she managed it.

With her task completed, the Doctor slumped over the console while she ignored the glow coming from her hands. She just wanted to rest, she couldn't go on, not like this.

The Doctor winced as she felt the regeneration energy burning its way through her body as she clamped her hands on the telepathic circuits as tightly as she could, and she concentrated - this would have been easier if she had access to the telepathic circuits of her own TARDIS since her ship was accustomed to the minds of her friends, but since she was directing her temporary ship towards where Graham lived, it was easy for the Doctor to find him.

She smiled when her mind touched his. "Graham," she said.

Graham was asleep, but after a few more moments of telepathic prodding against his mind, she managed to get him awake. "What's that?"

"Graham, it's me," the Doctor sagged against the console. Honestly, it had taken her more energy than she'd have wanted just to wake him up. "The Doctor."

"Doc? Where are you? Where've you been? We've been waiting for weeks?"

"I'm using the telepathic circuits of the TARDIS I've taken from Gallifrey to contact you, Graham, please shut up," the Doctor whispered. "I don't have time to answer your questions. I'm dying!"

"What?!"

The Doctor closed her eyes. "The Master shot me just as I was getting into the TARDIS I'm using. It's started."

"What's started?" Fear crept into Graham's voice.

"I'm regenerating, Graham. In a bit, I won't be the same person anymore. But I wanted to see you and the rest of the Fam before I went."

"Oh, Doc," Graham whispered, and over the connection, she could feel the sadness and confusion coming over clearly; the Doctor knew she had only herself to blame since she had never really spoken about herself, never mind regeneration despite giving her friends a few odd tips and how she had been a man more than once, although it had been that idiot C who cleared it up for her friends she was not joking.

"Graham, please," she sighed as the pain bled through over the connection and she knew her friend could feel it. "Just…be there, all three of you. Please. I'll see ya soon."

The Doctor broke the connection but she didn't remove her hands from the telepathic contacts as she mentally directed the TARDIS to Graham's house. She wasn't particularly surprised by how easily the TARDIS followed her mental commands and she wasn't surprised when she mentally commanded the scanner screen to switch on the view showed her three friends standing in Graham's living room, all of them looking frightened and concerned.

The Doctor smiled at the sight of her friends. "Perfect landing," she whispered, and the small part of her mind which was always envious of fully operational TARDISes reared its head again, but she suppressed it. Ever since she had encountered House when she had endangered herself, Amy and Rory, and the TARDIS when she had thought she had finally found a group of Time Lord survivors who weren't as mad as the Master only to discover they were long since dead, the Doctor had developed a far greater rapport and understanding with the old Type 40. Unfortunately, there were times where even that patient understanding faded and became nothing but annoyed frustration.

She gasped again as the regeneration energy started surging from her even more. She looked at her friends in confusion, idly wondering why they weren't with her, and then she realised she hadn't opened the door of the TARDIS yet. Using the last of her strength she opened the doors for them. Her fam came running into the TARDIS console room, but her vision swam before she could say anything to them.

With that, the Thirteenth Doctor slid to the ground as blackness took her vision, but the last thing she saw was her glowing hands and the horrified faces of her Fam.

XXX

"Doctor!" Yaz cried as she ran into the console room, barely taking in the purple hue of the walls and the sight of the old police box as she saw her friend slide onto the floor by the console, her body glowing but even through the weird, otherworldly glow, she could see the fatigue on the Doctor's face.

She had been exhausted when they'd found her on Gallifrey - Yaz had no intention of letting the Doctor lie or evade the questions on her mind, like why she hadn't said anything about not admitting what had happened to her home, although granted she could understand some of the reasons; the loss of her world must have shattered the Doctor, and it certainly explained why she was desperate to find the Master and Yaz had little doubt, especially seeing his insanity, the evil Time Lord had something to do with the carnage on Gallifrey - but there hadn't been any time to properly ask the Doctor anything about what had happened, but she had managed to get back some of her old energy.

But seeing her glow…

Hearing from Graham the Master had shot the Doctor, and now she was regenerating was scary enough, but what made it worse was Yaz, Ryan, and Graham knew _so little _about regeneration. They knew that it changed the body since the Doctor hadn't recognised the Master when they'd assumed he was O, but beyond that, they knew nothing.

The glow intensified, seeming to engulf the Doctor before she seemed to explode. The force was enough to send Yaz back with a scream as the Doctor exploded with light, but she could see even from where she was standing with Graham and Ryan the Doctor was changing. Finally, the light disappeared and the glow faded, and the three ran towards the prone figure on the floor of the TARDIS.

It revealed the face of a woman who appeared to be physically the same age as the Doctor they'd known (Yaz had to bear in mind the Doctor had said she had once had the body of a white-haired Scotsman, and she also remembered the Doctor saying she had lived for a long time to the point where even she didn't know how old she was) with long dark hair who seemed to be around the same build as the Doctor, but it was hard to tell since she was still lying on the floor.

She was startled when someone moved past her and she realised it was Graham, who cautiously and tentatively leaned over the unconscious Time Lord, and gently touched her hand. Graham was still for a second while he counted the hearts beats.

"I can feel her pulses," Graham said at last with a shake of his head. "Trouble is, I dunno whether or not it's good or bad."

"How are they, her hearts?" Ryan whispered looking down at the Doctor with shock on his face. Yaz couldn't blame him; it was one thing hearing Time Lords could change their appearance, but seeing it like this….

"They seem to be working okay, but," Graham shook his head and sighed as he looked down at the Doctor sadly. "I dunno…I dunno anything about her people, so I dunno what's normal for her after a regeneration."

Ryan looked around the TARDIS. "What do we do with her, I mean where can we take her? I don't think she should be kept in here, on the floor."

"Good point," Yaz smiled at her friend before turning more solemnly to Graham. "I can keep the door of the TARDIS opened, you two pick her up and take her out and we can put her on the sofa to rest."

Graham looked at Ryan and nodded at his adopted grandson, and the older man gently picked her up under her armpits while Ryan grabbed the legs.

As they carried the Doctor out of the TARDIS, Yaz looked around the console room of the gleaming time machine before she focused on the screen which had the flowing circular script of the Time Lord language.

"Fuck, I wish we knew more about that language so we could help her. There might be a room in the TARDIS - hers and this one - where regenerating Time Lords could heal," Yaz commented.

"There's nothing we can do. I don't fancy playing with the controls in either ship - hers or this one," Ryan observed while he kept focused on holding onto the Doctor while he looked over her shoulder to make sure there wasn't anything in his path to block him. "For all we know, we could be thrown into a sun."

"It's academic now," Graham said as they took the Doctor to the sofa and laid her down while he took off her coat. Ryan went out of the room and came back a few minutes later carrying a blanket. Without a word, he quietly and gently draped the Doctor's body with it. Yaz took the coat and held onto it, bowing her head and crying softly.

"Hey, Yaz," Graham whispered, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. "We know how you feel, but she's still the Doctor."

"It's not just that. She didn't deserve this. The Doctor we knew….she's gone, murdered by that monster who was once her friend. How could anyone do this?!" Yaz's voice rose in pitch as she got worked up.

"Shush," Graham hissed, looking over his shoulder to see if the shout had woken the Doctor up before he turned back when he saw she was still unconscious. He turned back and wrapped Yaz up in his arms. "I know how you feel, believe me. I do. I want nothing more than to find the Master, and make him pay for what he's done; not just to the Doctor, but for what he's done to the Time Lords. There's no doubt in my old noggin that he was responsible for all that destruction since it tallies with the way she's acted - when she wakes up, I am gonna get answers once and for all, but for now, we need to wait for her to wake up."

Yaz pulled away and sniffled as tears welled up in her eyes, but she nodded. "Yeah, answers," she said, "but will she give them?"

Graham couldn't answer that question.

"Hey, look," Yaz saw something over Graham's shoulder.

Graham turned and saw the glow of regeneration around the Doctor's body once more. For a horrible moment, he assumed something had gone wrong, and it was happening again, but the intensity of the glow seemed subdued.

"Ryan," Graham called.

Ryan entered and looked around for a second, confused about why he'd been called before he looked down at the Doctor.

"Is that what happened last time?" Graham asked the young man, remembering what Grace and he had said the last time the Doctor had been in this state.

"Yeah, just like this. It looks perfectly normal, and so does that," Ryan said.

While Ryan had been speaking, the Doctor's mouth opened gently, and a cloud of golden particles streamed out of her mouth.

"God, what was that?" Yaz asked, but no one answered her. They didn't know themselves.


	2. Chapter 2

Damage.

When she woke up from a deep sleep, the woman didn't know who she was. All she had in her head were so many disjointed and incoherent thoughts and memories that the woman couldn't fit together because all of them were jumbled, and the woman had problems sorting through them all.

As she opened her eyes, the woman winced as she was met with a terrible dazzling light that made her instinctively throw her arms up to cover her eyes before she was used to the glare.

"You doughnut, Ryan," she heard a voice say, and aside from recognising the voice the woman had problems recalling where she had heard it, but she knew the name 'Ryan.' Very well in fact. "Draw those curtains, quick."

She sensed rather than saw the light level dropping, and she moved her arms and looked around herself, letting her eyes adjust to the lighting. She….felt she recognised this place, although she wasn't entirely sure when she had seen this place before, and she found herself looking into the face of a woman.

For a moment the woman wondered if she was looking at a reflection of herself, but she quickly realised this was not her, but she definitely recognised the face from somewhere, and a distant memory of a blonde woman with jaw-length hair and hazel eyes with a wide smile popped into her mind before fading away, but the woman felt the blonde woman was someone important.

"How are you feeling?" the woman sitting next to her asked.

The woman shook her head, closing her eyes and holding her head. "Oh, my head!" she complained, and then she stiffened a little. Her voice….it felt and sounded….different.

The woman sitting near her seemed surprised by the sound of her voice. "You sound Irish, now."

"Irish?" the woman repeated, lifting her head up and looking deeply into the woman's face, trying hard to sort through her memories to find a clue as to who this woman was. She knew her from somewhere, but she just couldn't seem to place her. "Is that good, or bad? Or somewhere in-between?"

There was also something familiar about Irish, but what? Oh great, another thing in her head.

"No," the woman sitting opposite her said quickly. "No, there's nothing wrong. It's just unexpected. I mean, you told us once you'd been a white-haired Scotsman, and then you had a Yorkshire accent."

"What?" the woman tilted her head slightly before she rubbed her eyes.

"What's the last thing you remember?"

The woman lifted her head and saw two men - one who looked, physically, to be around the same age as the young woman sitting near her with dark skin, and a physically older man, although something inside the woman's mind said that she was a lot older than all of them combined - and looked between the three of them, who were staring at her with interest.

"I…," the woman had to strain her mind a little bit as she carefully sat up, and she looked down at her clothes and saw she was wearing a dark shirt with what looked like rainbow strips over her chest, and blue trousers held up by braces. Hm, how odd…. "There was a….a city. An explosion…And I was opening the door to a…..a TT capsule, but as I was getting in….."

"A TT capsule?"

The woman looked up into the face of the younger man who'd spoken. "Oh, a TARDIS-."

Her eyes widened as her mind, forced to remember recent events started snapping together, and additional memories suddenly flooded through her mind; the meeting with the Master when she'd discovered her old enemy working with the Kasarvin, the news from him Gallifrey was gone and her suspicion he was lying even though she hadn't been sure at the time, her visit to the Citadel only to find the planet had indeed been razed to the ground and her certainty the Master had been responsible for the devastation of their world before his holographic message had confirmed it, her mood swings as she tried to find the Master again to find out what the Timeless Child was, the encounter in that alternate timeline where Earth had succumbed to the ravages of pollution, the mess with the Judoon in Gloucester where she met another version of her whom she had never been before, and the way her attempt to defeat the Lone Cyberman had gone wrong so quickly because she hadn't bothered to go after him when her friends had brought her Jack's message…

_I was so obsessed with finding that psychotic bastard when I should have been more interested in stopping another monster, and I was so stupid I didn't plan ahead._

"I'm an idiot!" she closed her eyes, groaning in frustration with herself.

"Whoa, what do y'mean by that?" the older man in the room asked, looking at her in concern.

"I mean I was so obsessed with finding the Master rather than taking care of other matters," the woman answered, still mentally kicking herself in annoyance even as other memories became untangled and clearer in her head. Unfortunately, a lot of them focused on the Master, although she doubted it was surprising given how focused she was on the man/woman.

Memories became untangled in her head included the incident on Destination, hundreds of years and twelve lifetimes ago, back in the days where life was so much simpler when all she felt she needed to do was protect Susan from the cosmos, meeting the Master again when during the Second World War, to the confrontations in the 1970s when he'd been trying to demonstrate his power, that encounter with the Master when his body was a burnt-out husk, all to that business where the Master's interference with Logopolis threatened the entire universe, the Master's uneasy alliance with the Rani in Killingworth at the time of the Industrial Revolution, that business in San Francisco where the Master, nearing the end of his rope, tried to steal her remaining lives before falling into the Eye of Harmony….

Only to encounter the Master again and again; that bald incarnation who had coveted the power of the Eminence and who'd been stupid enough to enter into a small temporal war with one of his previous incarnations, tried to steal the brain print of Artron during that mess with the Ravenous, those battles during the Time War….only for him to return true to form when Martha inadvertently drew attention to Professor Yana's watch which restored his mind, the Year that Never Was, that mess with the 'Immortality Gate,' Missy and her Cybermen, and that business on Skaro before taking custody of her and sticking her in that vault, believing stupidly Missy can be rehabilitated and being happy with her progress until they'd arrived on that Mondasian colony ship only to encounter her immediate predecessor who'd lulled her back into evil, and her betrayal when she had begged the two Masters to help against the Cybermen.

Now this…the destruction of Gallifrey when he'd discovered that all Time Lords including himself shared some DNA of the Timeless Child, although there were so many things she wasn't entirely sure about that, desecrating their own people, turning them into the CyberMasters.

"You wanted to find out what he'd done to your planet," the young woman pointed out.

"That doesn't justify my stupidity," the woman said, shaking her head as more memories snapped into place. "I'd visited Gallifrey often enough times after he'd burnt it to the ground; I could have tracked down his movements prior to what he'd done. I could have accessed the Matrix and watched what he had done, and pieced it together instead of going there to experience survivor's guilt again."

"Again?" the young man echoed while his friends looked surprised. "You mean this has happened to your planet before?"

The woman bit her lip and nodded. "Yes," she admitted, her mind haunted by the memories of the Time War; all of the ones which were not fogged of course, but since so many of them were paradoxical anyway, it made little difference as far as she could see, but she remembered the pain and destruction she had seen in the War as clearly as she saw this room now.

"What happened?" the young woman gasped.

The woman sighed as the memories became more coherent in her mind. "The Time War. The Last Great Time War…the greatest war in the universe's history," she said before she closed her eyes as her head ached again.

Instantly she felt hands on her shoulders, and she opened her eyes and looked into the eyes of the young woman, who was looking at her in concern. "What's wrong?"

"Are you okay, Doc?" the physically older man asked.

_Doc? _

"Doc?" the woman tilted her head as she repeated the man's strange word. "Is…is that my name?"

She had just asked the question out of curiosity, but she had underestimated the effect of the question would have on them since they had clearly known her for some time. The young woman shared a look of upset with her friends. "Oh, god, she can't remember," she said in dismay.

"Don't you remember the last time, Yaz?" the young man said. "She couldn't remember her name then."

_Yaz. _

_Ryan…and Graham. Wait…._

"Yaz, Ryan, Graham," the woman said slowly, letting the names trickle from her mouth. "I….I am the Doctor!"

"She remembers!" Graham grinned.

"That was quick!"

"You gave me incentive," the Doctor smiled, but she fought down another wave of dizziness. "Can…can I have some tea, please Graham? The superheated tannins and free radicals will definitely help the synapses."

Graham jumped to his feet and rushed to the kitchen. "Okay, Doc," he called back, not seeing the Doctor wrinkle her nose; she wasn't sure at this point if she liked the nickname, but there was still time for her to get her newly regenerated personality sorted out.

Ryan and Yaz glanced at each other, clearly hoping the other would break the silence; in truth, the Doctor was thankful they weren't speaking at that point, she needed to sort through her mind, and let it heal a bit. But she had to ask something important. "How long was I out for?" she asked quietly.

Yaz checked her watch. "Nearly two days," she replied.

The Doctor needed a second to remember the times of Earth before she nodded. "So, I'm no longer regenerating? That's good."

"When do you stop regenerating?" Ryan asked.

"When it starts, the energy surges through the body, changing everything until the Time Lord's appearance changes. Once that's happened, the old body dies and the life of the next one begins, but after that, the regeneration continues for another 15 hours until it stops and settles, but in those 15 hours the Time Lord's mind and body is vulnerable; in the early hours, if I was knocked unconscious it could start all over again."

"So," Ryan began as he tried to process what he'd just heard, "if you were knocked on the head quite badly, it will happen again? You'd change again?"

"Yes," the Doctor replied simply. "Early days of a new incarnation are always fraught with trouble."

Graham came back with a mug which he offered the Doctor. The newly regenerated Time Lady took the mug with a grateful smile, and she closed her eyes and inhaled gently. The inhaled steam from the mug quickly went to work, and she felt her mind clearing up. The Doctor, eager to be healed, placed the rim of the mug to her lips and she drank slowly, but she closed her eyes and pulled her lips away. Before her friends' eyes, she exhaled another, slightly longer stream of golden particles.

"Oh, that's so much better," she whispered.

"Do you feel better now?"

"Much!" the Doctor grinned, but her smile faded a little as she took another sip of her tea, gazing at her companions thoughtfully. She knew, even with her regeneration disorientated mind, they had dozens of questions. "I know I owe you more than a few answers," she said.

"A few?" Graham repeated.

"More like a thousand!" Yaz pointed out, looking at the Doctor with that pointedly annoyed manner that she had seen many times. "Well, for starters…why didn't you tell us about what happened to Gallifrey?"

The Doctor looked down into her tea for a second to gather her thoughts. "The Master told me about what had happened when we were in Paris, during the Second World War. At first, I refused to believe it, but after making sure he was dealt with when the Kasaavin took him to their realm….well, I travelled to Gallifrey. I couldn't believe it…the Citadel, the dome….the centre of Time Lord civilisation….the Panopticon," she smiled nostalgically as tears came to her eyes, surprising her since she had turned her back on her world, her heritage many, many times over the centuries, but it was still her home, "the Time Lords themselves, the Academy where the novices would go on to become part of the elite….All of them, gone. I don't know if some of my people survived, escaping in their own TARDISes, but it's something to keep in mind."

She looked down. "It's funny…I ran away from Gallifrey for so many reasons. One of the most prominent reasons was because I wanted to explore the universe. I didn't want secondhand knowledge, and I had never fitted in with the others despite my best efforts, so I ran away and I've been on the move for two thousand or so years…"

"Two thousand years?" Graham whispered, recalling all the times he had moaned about his age and how he was barely able to keep up. Now he knew the Doctor was many centuries older than he was, but hearing the number…it put things into perspective. "And all this time I thought my age was old…"

"For humans, yes, but for a Time Lord….," the Doctor shrugged, a wicked smirk on her face. "I'd be a teenager."

Her expression turned darker. "The Master had planted a holographic messenger in my pocket, knowing sooner or later I would go to Gallifrey. He said in the message he had needed to make them pay for what he'd discovered, that everything he - we - had known, was nothing but a lie. He brought up the Timeless Child."

"The Timeless- hold on, on Desolation, those cloth things said something about a Timeless Child. You told them to get out of your mind," Ryan said.

The Doctor nodded. "It was instinctive. According to the Master, it is buried in the Time Lord identity. And it is. Every time it was brought up since I would get little flashes of memories that weren't mine…of a small child wearing golden robes, standing underneath some sort of wormhole, or portal on a planet with a blue sky, with two monoliths towering over her. I've spent the last few months trying to find the Master, to make him give me answers. I knew he had escaped from the Kasaavin realm; the Master has exhausted his original regeneration cycle, forcing him to steal and hijack other people's bodies under unique circumstances, he has survived many near-death experiences that would have reduced another Time Lord to ash. He even survived a black hole. Getting trapped in an alien realm wouldn't have been an issue, and knowing the Master he would have made the Kasaavin regret imprisoning him."

"What do you mean?" Yaz asked.

"The Master is a sore loser. He likes to win, and he hates to lose. He holds onto a grudge like you wouldn't believe - you only need to see the long feud he's got with me to see it - and if he is imprisoned, he makes short work of those who imprisoned him. Once, many regenerations ago, the Master was caught on Earth and placed in a maximum-security prison; he had been trying to harness the powers of an alien who came from a species who'd uplifted humanity aeons ago. The Master got in touch with a group of Sea Devils to release him so he could see them wipe humanity out."

"What?!" Yaz yelped in horror.

"Who are the Sea Devils, Doc?" Graham asked, his eyes showing the horror he felt at how close humanity had come to being wiped out.

"Millions of years ago, Earth was ruled by a near reptilian species. I say near reptilian because of their appearance, but they share many warm-blooded traits. The human that discovered them called them the Silurians, but he got the period wrong. The Sea Devils were their marine cousins, and both of them were highly advanced societies. They ruled the Earth for centuries, but they went into hibernation when they discovered a small planet approaching the Earth. They calculated it would destroy all life, so they placed themselves into suspended animation in underground and underwater cities all over the planet, but the small planet didn't do what they'd calculated and it went into orbit and became the Moon."

"The moon?! Hold on, Silurians? When we met the Skithra, you said that gun was a Silurian blaster," Yaz said, momentarily pushing aside her shock about the moon's unexpected history in favour of getting fresh answers.

"Same technology. I don't know how the Skithra got it, but it's possible they stole it from a Silurian ark; some Silurians were more creative, and they designed and constructed ark ships to take their civilisation through space. I don't know if they planned to return to Earth once the disaster had passed, or if they planned to set up their civilisation somewhere else, but it's likely a mix of both for some," the Doctor took another sip of tea before she got back to the basics of the conversation. "Anyway, I wasn't surprised the Master came through the Boundary. I had hoped to bluff him, force him to talk…but when he threatened you Ryan, and the others, I couldn't let him so I let him take me through."

"I thought the Master had run out of ways to make me ill," she whispered. "Making plans to tear our world apart, desecrating the dead by putting in swimming pools, and torture chambers…It made me sick. But what made me more disgusted was how he'd invited the Cybermen to Gallifrey. But he showed me the truth of the Timeless Child."

"What is the Timeless Child?" Yaz asked.

The Doctor sighed and shook her head as she tried to make sense of what she'd learnt. "Before the Time Lords were founded, Gallifrey was a primitive world in comparison even if we had basic FTL travel. An explorer bravely left home and travelled the universe. She eventually found a planet where there monoliths that seemed to be opening a wormhole somewhere else, with a small child underneath. She never found out where that child came from, although truthfully I doubt she truly bothered to look.

"Anyway, the explorer took the child with her through the universe. She tried to find out more about her new charge, but she couldn't find anything. It was until they returned to Gallifrey, some of the mystery was resolved….but another came into sight. The child was playing with a friend, but there was an accident and the child fell to her death. The explorer watched as the child regenerated into a new body. For some time - I can't say how long - the explorer studied the Child and even caused a few regenerations to take place, just to find out how it worked. She eventually spliced the Child's DNA into her body and triggered a regeneration in her self."

The Doctor shook her head. "There are so many accounts about regeneration - no-one truly knows how it started, but it looks like this is how it started, and all the other experiments which made it work came afterwards. Rassilon, the Founder of Time Lord society, came up with a limited form of regeneration, but many believe the Time Lord engineer and scientist Artron discovered it. Maybe they both built on the Timeless Child discovery, and developed it into something the Time Lords could understand."

She hoped they didn't ask too many questions about Artron or Rassilon, although in the latter's case she knew it would happen given how she would be explaining about the Time War soon. But she didn't want to talk about Artron; the mess with the Master's 'Bruce' incarnation and the Eleven's alliance with the Ravenous brought back some really nasty memories.

"But…why would the Master destroy your world because of this?"

The Doctor sighed. This was the part of the story she still found hard to believe. "Because he claims…I am the Timeless Child."


	3. Chapter 3

I am sorry it's taken so long to update and finish this chapter, but that's life. Anyway, enjoy. Also, I don't own Doctor Who.

Please let me know what you think.

* * *

Damage.

"What?" Yaz whispered. "How can you be the Timeless Child, unless…you said you were two thousand years old? You just lost your memory, right?"

The Doctor sighed; only just in her new life, and already she was dealing with humans who were clueless, but given how she hadn't told her friends anything about Time Lord history then they had no idea just how long the Time Lords had been around. "How would that work, Yaz? No, Time Lord history goes back billions of years. Tecteun left Gallifrey before the Time Lords even appeared."

"Then how can you be the Timeless Child, Doc?" Graham asked confused.

The Doctor sighed again. "I think I'm a clone of the Timeless Child, not the Timeless Child themselves."

"A clone?"

"The Time Lords gave up sexual reproduction a long time ago," the Doctor explained, although she was hesitant about giving this much detail away given how private this was. "We use a form of artificial gestation; Rassilon, the Founder of Time Lord society, determined the best way to keep the universe stable was to link us to it and to ensure we ourselves never evolved. It's a hard thing to explain," she held up her hand while the others looked surprised by this little tip about Time Lord culture which she usually left ambiguous when speaking about her people, "so don't. To keep us the same, Rassilon introduced the Looms, devices which reproduced us."

"But how is that possible, just stopping evolution? You can't, can you?" Yaz looked uncertainly at her.

"Anything is possible, Yaz."

"So how can you be a clone, then?" Ryan asked.

"The Looms are like the transporters from Star Trek; they take the genetic material and form it from there, creating a walking, speaking being instantly. But they can work in reverse. They can disassemble genetic material and reform it later, but whatever came out from that would be a clone, technically speaking," the Doctor looked solemnly down at her hands. "That's the only thing that makes sense in my mind. I don't remember being a child standing underneath some strange wormhole. I don't remember an accident as a child which caused me to regenerate. I remember a different life. I remember the years I spent at the Academy, my time as a student with _him," _she spat the word with such venom it took her friends by surprise, "and the other members of our little group who were wasted on Gallifrey and wanted it to be dragged out of its complacency and into a new age but we all knew we would never do it since our futures were away from Gallifrey."

The Doctor was silent for a moment. "Being a clone…. it makes sense, really," she said. "A long time ago, I started to wonder about whether I was the product of a Loom Jumper when I saw a number of faces of people I didn't know during a nasty mental battle with another renegade Time Lord. But I never imagined…."

Ryan, Yaz, and Graham

The Doctor looked down sadly as she remembered those days she'd played truant from the Academy, still haunted by the knowledge hers may not be her only existence. She remembered hanging out with a version of the Master who hadn't yet shown himself to be a murderous monster, working with Drax on technical courses, seeing the Rani conduct one experiment after another, and working with the Monk on history. "I miss those days, especially now…," she said, closing her eyes, shaking from the anger at how her life had changed her from going out into the universe as a scholar before she had changed into a troubleshooter.

While she would never give up her life because she knew she was doing some good, a part of her wondered what life would have been like if Clara had never stopped her from taking that Type 53 TARDIS instead of her Type 40, but while she knew her life would have different, she knew she would never give it up.

"I miss some of my friends. I don't even know if the Master killed them all," she whispered. "Everyone of the renegades who'd left Gallifrey knew he was dangerous. Everyone on Gallifrey knew he was dangerous…Please….say some of them survived."

"Maybe they did. There's a chance," Yaz whispered, gently putting a hand on her shoulder.

The Doctor looked up at her with a smile.

"Why the secrecy?" Ryan whispered. "Didn't you trust us?"

"Ryan-."

"No, I wanna know,' Ryan insisted. "What, did you think we were children."

The Doctor was becoming annoyed by the questions. She could understand the anger, but she refused to be spoken to like that. She thought to herself if she in her current life would ever hide secrets the way her previous self had.

The answer was she didn't know.

"No," she said quietly. "I never thought you were a child, Ryan. Looking back I knew I was secretive. From a certain point of view, I could say it comes from everything I had been through in my previous three lives. Two lives ago, as soon as I regenerated, I found myself embroiled in a long temporal war, that was paradoxical in nature. A space church in my future would guard a planet I was protecting as well because my people were trying to return from the pocket universe I'd placed them in although I hadn't known about it at the time."

"What?"

The Doctor sighed. "In the Time War, the version of myself that was fighting the Daleks decided to end it by destroying my own people. I was tired of the fighting, tired of my people and their self-centred attitudes. I'd had enough. So, I stole a device that would end it all, time locking the Time War completely. And then….I found myself in the TARDIS, in a new body, with no memory of what had happened. All I knew was silence. I could not hear a single Time Lord in the universe, so I believed I had killed them all. I all but disowned my wartime self and travelled through time and space.

"But two lives ago, I found myself in a multi-century war with a religious cult who wanted to make sure an event that happened in my life never did happen. They….kidnapped a little girl from her parents, turned her into a psychotic assassin, so then she'd kill me, manipulating events as they went. I tried to save the little girl, but her older self told me after I'd failed I had brought the whole mess on myself, that I had made everyone so afraid, and I just created more monsters."

The Doctor looked away from her friends as that confrontation with River during those dark moments in her eleventh incarnation flooded her mind, which echoed with the way Adric had died which had made her fifth incarnation see their travels was more dangerous than ever when they'd blundered into that mess with the Cybermen because she had been curious after that encounter with the androids, to that later encounter with the Daleks which resulted in Tegan leaving.

"I managed to trick them by faking my own death, and I went into the shadows. I don't think it's worked because I've become big again, but maybe there's still time to change that," she said absently at the end, thinking it would be incredibly appealing for her if she found any record of her and erased it completely. "But when the point is when it was over with, I became more secretive because of the need to remain quiet. For the most part, I succeeded, but it became second nature for me. I think that's why I kept what happened to Gallifrey secret."

"Are you gonna try to find out if there are other Time Lord survivors, Doc?" Graham asked, but not before he sent a chiding look at Ryan. He could understand why his grandson felt this way, but there was no call shoving his feelings down the Doctor's throat when she was clearly hurting.

"Yeah. Trouble is I don't know where to start. I'd like to try to restore Gallifrey if I can," she rubbed her eyes.

Yaz, Ryan, and Graham shared a look of confusion. They had seen the devastation of the Doctor's planet, and there was no way she could repair it all.

"Er, how are you going to do that? I mean, that city was wrecked-," Yaz began.

"True, but there's still Time Lord technology there. There are numerous systems I can use in the Citadel to undo the destruction caused by the Master and the Cybermen. I can see ways of bringing my people back, and if it works, then they can finally track the Master down and deal with him once and for all," the Doctor finished coldly, surprising her friends.

"That…doesn't sound like you, Doctor," Yaz said hesitantly, wincing; she didn't really know the Doctor in this current incarnation, and while she could see the same personality traits between this Doctor and the one they'd known, they had never seen her this vengeful.

The Doctor sighed. "I'm tired, Yaz," she whispered so brokenly. "For centuries I have tried to make him stop, to be the kid I knew on Gallifrey. In my previous life, I tried rehabilitating Missy, the last incarnation of the Master who'd regenerated into a female body. For a time I thought I had succeeded….only she didn't last long because we accidentally ran into one of her past selves, who was creating a new race of Cybermen. She returned to her bad habits when it would have been so easy for her to be the person I'd wanted her to be.

"But now, after being shot and forced to regenerate again because of her successor, seeing what he did to my people, he is irredeemable and he is unstable. He has already shown his evil many times over, and enough is enough. I've had it with fighting him time and time again. In the past, I might have seen it as an enjoyable game of chess, but those days are….oh…..centuries over. The line has to be drawn somewhere. He has got to be stopped! I want the Master out of my lives," the Doctor finished before she looked down. "There comes a time where you get tired of an enemy, and I've reached my limit. He's not going to change, I see that now."

The Doctor looked down in disappointment, not seeing her friends exchange a look of surprise.

"Anyway," the Doctor lifted her head. "If you three don't mind, I'd like to get back to sleep. I'm so tired after being linked to the Matrix and going through a regeneration."

"Of course, Doc," Graham said before anyone said anything as they watched the Doctor settle back down to sleep.

Yaz headed for the kitchen. Her mind was still on the conversation, surprised by what the Doctor had said about the Master. She could see things from the Doctor's point of view, but she hadn't expected her to make a decision that quickly and so seriously.

"Yaz?"

Yaz turned in surprise. "Graham? Don't do that!"

"Sorry, love," Graham tried smiling abashed, but his face settled. "Are you okay?"

"I dunno anymore," Yaz sighed. "I knew she could regenerate, but this Doctor…I don't know how much she has changed. But the Doctor I knew would never have talked like that…."

"I know, how do you think I feel? I was as surprised as you were when she said that, but what did you expect? The Doctor's been through hell, especially if she's just had to deal with all the stuff she's had to cope with. I just wish she'd told us about what had happened with Gallifrey," Graham hissed, looking upset on the Doctor's behalf.

"I know," Yaz looked down, remembering how insensitive she and the others had been shortly after that mess with the Master and the Kasaavin. "But she was borderline merciless just now."

"Don't you think she has the right? Yaz, she's just found out she's the reincarnation of an alien who was used to give the Time Lords their power to change their faces, and she's discovered everything she's ever known is a lie. I think she has the right to be in her current mood."

"But do you remember when she said you'd be kicked out of the TARDIS if you killed Tim Shaw?" Yaz asked, making Graham stiffen at the memory.

"What about it?" he asked guardedly.

"And when she went for that Dalek?" Yaz went on to make her point.

"Yaz, just get to the point."

"She said if you killed Tim Shaw, she would drop you back home, but she thinks that gives her permission to go for a Dalek, and now she's going for the Master. Why would she do that?" Yaz said. She knew she was crossing a line, but she didn't want to travel with someone who was going to be a liar and a hypocrite. Not only had the Doctor warned Graham she would drop him off if he killed or harmed the Stenza warrior who'd caused nothing but misery and pain to so many, but she had then gone after a Dalek.

While she looked up to the Doctor in her own way, Yaz knew the Doctor - well, the one she had known - talked so much and she didn't think of the long-term problems until it was too late. She had been so fixated on the Master she had ignored the Lone Cyberman, and Yaz could not help but wonder if all those needless deaths could have been prevented had the Doctor focused on the Cyberman before going after the Master again. But when she had gone after the Dalek, Yaz had remembered what she had been saying to Graham about revenge. It seemed so holier than thou, and it had always pissed her off.

"I did that because I didn't want anyone else to be what I was," a now-familiar Irish accent said.

Yaz and Graham turned. The Doctor was standing there, looking tired and shaky and not very happy. "I'm trying to get some sleep, and I can't concentrate on a healing coma because you two are talking so loud. I heard you."

"I'm sorry-," Yaz said apologetically, but what else could she say after that.

The Doctor ignored her. "I didn't want any of you to be what I was. After the Time War, do you have any idea of what I went through? I had just believed I had committed _genocide _on not just the Time Lords, but the Daleks as well. I kept telling myself I had done it because if I hadn't the Time War would have destroyed the universe. Even the Time Lords were dangerous. Yaz, the Time Lords have or had or have the power to rip space and time to shreds, put it all back together, and then do it all over again.

"In the body, I had afterwards, I was suffering from severe survivor's guilt. Whenever I encountered a Dalek, I went mad and they caused more death and destruction whenever I encountered them. Even I was frightened by my anger whenever I saw them, so I am sorry if I appear to you as a _hypocrite, _Yaz. But you fail to understand something. We are all hypocrites, even you are. So don't you ever stand there and preach to me from a moral high ground that doesn't exist. When I told Graham about what I'd do if he tried to kill Tim Shaw, I did it because I was hoping he would be better than I was when it comes to the Daleks, and yes I know I made mistakes when we met that Dalek. I'm not stupid, Yaz. Don't ever think I am. I know my flaws. I talk too much, especially in my last incarnation and a few others before then, and I am happier talking and yakking until I'm blue in the face without taking notice of everything going on around me until the truth is thrown into my face. I don't need or want you to tell me my flaws."

The Doctor sighed tiredly and rubbed her eyes. "I am tired, I'll speak to you later," she whispered quietly and she turned around and walked out of the room, only this time she grabbed her old coat and pulled out the TARDIS key. She ignored Ryan and just walked inside, pausing over the threshold of the TARDIS she had taken from Gallifrey. It had been a long time since she had walked into a TARDIS console room with the basic white theme, although that time where she had encountered her first incarnation (she had no idea if that was her first life), and that Ruth incarnation came second.

_Mm, maybe I should reset the desktop theme in my own TARDIS so it looks neater, _she thought to herself before she went to the police box shape of her TARDIS and went inside. She was tired of humans right now. All she wanted was to rest in the Zero room until she was properly healed, and she wasn't going to get that, even if the couch out there was still comfortable. And they didn't know about the Zero room.

As she walked into the TARDIS, adjusting the architectural systems to bring the Zero room closer to where she was. It was cheating a little bit, but she felt more with it than when she had been in her fifth incarnation. Thinking about her previous lives had the Doctor leaning against the console. Knowing her luck now, the Doctor was willing to bet that what she had thought was her fifth incarnation was actually her 90th or something like that. How many lives had she led? Would she ever know for sure?

All she knew was the Master was right.

Everything she had known was nothing more than a pack of lies. And she had no idea what to do next.


End file.
